World War II atrocities in Poland
Encyclopedia
Approximately six million Polish citizens, divided nearly equally between non-Jewish and Jewish, perished during World War II
. Most were civilians killed by the actions of Nazi Germany
, the Soviet Union
and their allies. At the Nuremberg Tribunal, three categories were established. These categories were waging war, war crimes and crimes against humanity. This article details war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in occupied Poland during World War II or the origin of the crime started in occupied Poland.
Following the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 by Germany and their Soviet ally on 17 September 1939, Poland was divided between them. Germany annexed 91,902 square kilometres with 10 million citizens and controlled the so-called General government which consisted of a further 95,742 kilometres with 12 million citizens. The Soviet Union occupied 202,069 square kilometres with over 13 million citizens. There were many similarities between the two zones of occupations e.g. both shot civilians and POWs.
Amongst the first to suffer were the Border Defence Corps
. Many officers were murdered. General Olszyna-Wilczyński
was shot. In the Wilno area and Polesie the officers were murdered.
In Lviv
the troops, including the Police force, surrendered after agreeing to terms that allowed them to travel to neutral countries (Rumania and Hungary) but the Soviet administration reneged on their agreement and they were sent to Soviet POW camps including 2,000 officers.
Soviet estimated the total captured as 9,350 officers and 181,233 soldiers.
The Soviet used the same process of subjugation used against their own citizens especially deportation. In 1940 and the first half of 1941, the Soviets deported more than 1,500,000 Poles, most in four mass deportations
. The first deportation took place 10 February 1940, with more than 220,000 sent to northern European Russia; the second on 13–15 April 1940, sending 300,000 to 330,000 primarily to Kazakhstan; a third wave in June–July 1940 totaled more than 240,000 perhaps 400,000; the fourth occurred in June, 1941, deporting 200,000. The fourth wave contained a large number of children. Upon resumption of Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations in 1941, it was determined based on Soviet information that more than 760,000 of the deportees had died—a large part of those dead being children, who had comprised about a third of deportees.
As well as deporting Polish citizens, Polish men were drafted into the Soviet army. It has been estimated that 210,000 were drafted.
Katyn is one notorious massacre by the NKVD
. The Katyn Forest is the site where 4,443 were murdered by the Soviets. Most were reserve Polish officers including political leaders, government officials, and intellectuals. The name Katyn is now associated with the systematic execution of up to 21,768 Polish citizens.
From the start, the war against Poland was intended as a fulfilment of the plan described by Adolf Hitler
in his book Mein Kampf
. The main axis of the plan was that all of Eastern Europe
should become part of the greater Germany, the so-called German Lebensraum
("living space"). The German Army
was sent, as stated by Adolf Hitler in his Armenian quote
: "with orders to kill without mercy and reprieve all men, women and children of the Polish race". This could be seen as an attempt to destroy the entire nation. The Germans saw both Poles and Polish Jews as inferior to them.
Location, date and numbers of Polish citizens murdered:
As well as civilians, Polish soldiers were massacred; even on the first day of fighting, 1 September, Polish POWs were murdered at Pilchowice
, Czuchów, Gierałtowice, Bojków, Lubliniec
, Kochcice, Zawiść, Ornontowice and Wyry
.
The Luftwaffe
also took part by strafing refugees on the road. The number of civilians wounded or killed by aerial bombing is put at over 100,000. The Luftwaffe dropped their bombs on open cities against the civilians in them. Amongst the Polish cities and towns to be bombed were
Over 156 towns and villages were attacked by the Luftwaffe. Warsaw suffered particularly severely with a combination of aerial bombardment and artillery fire reducing large parts of the historic centre to rubble. The Soviet Union assisted the Germans by allowing them to use a radio beacon from Minsk to guide their planes.
, special action squads of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen
) were deployed in the rear, and arrested or killed civilians caught offering resistance against the Germans
or considered capable of doing so, as determined by their position and social status. Tens of thousands of government
official
s, landowners, clergy
, and members of the intelligentsia — teacher
s, doctors
, journalist
s, and others (both Poles and Jews) — were either murdered in mass executions or sent to prison
s and concentration camps. German army units and paramilitary Selbstschutz
("self-defense") forces composed of Volksdeutsche
also participated in executions of civilians. The Selbstschutz, along with SS units, took an active part in the Mass murders in Piaśnica
, in which between 12,000 and 16,000 Polish civilians were murdered.
One of the most well known examples was the deportation to concentration camps in November 1939 of 180 professors from the university of Cracow. The German occupiers launched AB-Aktion in May 1940 a plan to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia and leadership class. More than 16,000 members of the intelligentsia were murdered in Operation Tannenberg
alone.
The Roman Catholic Church
was suppressed in Wartheland more harshly than elsewhere: churches were systematically closed; most priest
s were either killed, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government
. In the General Government, Hans Frank’s diary shows he planned a “war on the clergy”. The Germans also closed seminaries
and convent
s and persecuted monk
s and nun
s. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 2,801 members of the Polish clergy were murdered (in all of Poland); of these, 1,926 died in concentration camps (798 of them at Dachau). One hundred and eight of them are regarded as blessed martyr
s, Maximilian Kolbe
as a saint
.
s, museum
s, libraries, and scientific laboratories. Polish academic institutions were turned into German establishments. Polish children were forced to attend and obey with strict punishment used. They demolished hundreds of monuments to national heroes
. To prevent the birth of a new generation of educated Poles, German officials decreed that the schooling of Polish children should end after a few years of elementary education.
At the end of October 1939, the Germans introduced the death penalty for disobedience to the German occupation.
It was the German plan to move Poles to Siberia. Himmler wrote a memorandum
in May 1940. In it he promised to deport all Poles to the east [Russia]. Plans for mass transportation and slave labor camps for up to 20 million Poles were made. All were intended to die during the cultivation of the swamps.
During the war, Himmler in his capacity as Reich Commissioner oversaw the kidnapping of Polish children to be Germanized. The German also took approximately 50,000, some estimate are as high as 200,000, Polish children from their families. They were sent to the Reich to be subject to "Germanisation". Many of the children were not recovered and remained in Germany.
Other sites include: Rawicz
, Grodzisk Wielkopolski
, Nowy Tomyśl
, Międzychód
, Żnin
, Września
, Chełmno, Chojnice
, Kalisz
and Włocławek.
In the Wartheland, the Nazis' goal was complete Germanization: to assimilate the territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich
. Germans closed elementary schools where Polish was the language taught. Streets and cities were renamed so that Łódź became Litzmannstadt, for example. Tens of thousands of Polish enterprises
, from large industrial firms to small shops, were seized without payment to the owners. Signs posted in public places warned: "Entrance forbidden for Poles, Jews, and dogs."
The Germans planned to change ownership of all property in the land incorporated into the Third Reich. In a speech to German colonist, Arthur Greiser
said "In ten years there will not even be a peasant smallholding which will not be in German hands". This force resettlement affected 2 million Poles. Families were made in the severe winter of 1939-40 to leave behind almost everything without any recompense. As part of Operation Tannenburg alone, 750,000 Polish peasants were forced and their property given to Germans. A further 330,000 were murdered.
Jews were treated slightly differently as they were gathered together into ghettos in the cities. Heinrich Himmler
ordered all Jews in the annexed lands to be deported to central Poland. In winter 1939-40, about 100,000 Jews were thus deported.
; under the threat of execution, no patient could be released from the hospital; and all patients were counted and transported by trucks to an unknown destination. Each truck was accompanied by armed soldiers from special SS detachments who returned without the patients after a few hours. The patients were said to be transferred to another hospital, but evidence showed that they had been killed. The first action of this type took place in Kocborowo, at a large psychiatric hospital in the Gdańsk
region on 22 September 1939. Along with their patients, six hospital employees, including a deputy director, were murdered by a firing squad. By December, 1,800 patients from Kocborowo had been murdered and buried in the forest of Szpegawski. In total, 7,000 were buried in the forest of Szpegawski. Similar exterminations took place in October 1939 in a hospital in Owińska, near Poznań
, where 1,000 patients (children and adults) were killed.
In addition to the executions by firing squad, other methods of mass murder were also used. Patients at a psychiatric hospital in Owińska were transported to a military fortress in Poznań where, in Fort VII
bunker
s, they were gassed by carbon monoxide
, approximately 50 persons at a time. Other Owińska hospital patients were gassed in sealed trucks by the carbon monoxide of the exhaust fumes. The same method was performed in Kochanówek Hospital near Łódź where, between March–August 1940, 2,200 persons were killed. This was the first "successful" test of mass murder using gas poisoning and this "technique" was later used and perfected on many other psychiatric patients in occupied Poland and Germany and, starting in 1941, on inmates of the extermination camps. The total number of psychiatric patients murdered by the Nazis in occupied Poland between 1939-1945 is estimated to be more than 16,000, with an additional 10,000 patients who died of malnutrition
. Additionally, approximately 100 out of 243 members of the pre-war Polish Psychiatric Association met the same fate as their patients. Nazi terror was aimed at the complete reconstruction of society. Jews were to disappear; Poles were to become slaves of Greater Germany. Therefore the leadership of Poles: political, economic and religious, were to be murdered, while the bulk of the population were stripped of any rights and given no education or health care. To explain the policy of terror for German society at home and abroad, some pretext was necessary. Some of the alleged causes were revenge for Bloody Sunday, reaction to Polish resistance
activities and the political agenda of the fanatical Nazi leadership.
, Poles, along with other Eastern Europeans viewed as inferior, were subject to especially harsh discriminatory measures. They were forced to wear identifying purple Ps sewn to their clothing, subjected to a curfew
, and banned from public transport
. While the treatment of factory workers or farm hands often varied depending on the individual employer, Polish laborers as a rule were compelled to work longer hours for lower wages than Western Europeans and, in many cities, they were forced to live in segregated
barracks
behind barbed wire
. Social relations with Germans outside work were forbidden and sexual relations with them were considered "racial defilement
", punishable by death. During the war, hundreds of Polish men were executed for their relations with German women.
in German-occupied Poland and the Reich. A major labour camp complex at Stutthof
, east of Gdańsk/Danzig, existed from September, 1939 to the end of the war, where an estimated 20,000 Poles died as a result of executions, hard labour, and harsh conditions. Some 100,000 Poles were deported to Majdanek
, and tens of thousands of them died there. An estimated 20,000 Poles died at Sachsenhausen
, 20,000 at Gross-Rosen, 30,000 at Mauthausen
, 17,000 at Neuengamme, 10,000 at Dachau, and 17,000 at Ravensbrück. In addition, tens of thousands of Polish people were executed or died in their thousands in other camps, including special children's camps such as in Łódź and its subcamp at Dzierżan, in prisons and other places of detention inside and outside Poland.
The Auschwitz concentration camp went into operation on 14 June 1940. The first transport of 728 Polish prisoners consisted mostly of schoolchildren, students and soldiers from an overcrowded prison at Tarnów
. Within a week another 313 arrived. There were major transports in August (1,666) and September (1,705). This so called “Polish” phase lasted until the middle of 1942. By March 1941, 10,900 prisoners were registered at the camp, most of them Poles.
The Germans inside occupied Poland created some 400 ghettos in which they forced Jews to live. These ghettos were part of the German policy of removing Jews from Europe. The combination of excess numbers, unsanitary conditions and lack of food create a high death rate. The first ghetto was established in October 1939 at Piotrków. Initially the ghettos were open but on 1 May the Łódź ghetto was closed by Germans sealing the Jews inside. The Warsaw ghetto was closed in November 1940. The Germans started a reservation for Jews near Lublin.
The Germans tried to divide the Poles from the Jews using cruel laws, such as Poles buying from Jewish shops were subject to execution. Maria Brodacka became the first Pole to be killed by the Germans for helping a Jew. The Germans used the incident to kill 100 Jews being held as hostages. At the start of the war 1,335 Poles were killed for sheltering Jews.
Towards the end of 1942, the mass extermination of Polish Jews had started with deportation to the death camps of others outside Poland.
It was not only prisoners who were murdered by NKVD as the Soviets retreated. Other Soviet crimes included:
Massacre – 1500 Jews (elderly, women and children only)
By 1943, it was common for the population to be subject to mass murder.
in Poland that took place in July 1941 during World War II. The official investigation of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance confirmed that the crime was "committed directly by Poles
, but inspired by the Germans
." Similar events occurred at Radziłów and Wąsosz
.
Some Poles have also murdered ethnic Ukrainians such as the case of Pawłokoma. There are also claims of smaller scale killings of ethnic Lithuanians
.
Amongst the first to suffer were units of the Polish army fleeing the Germans. However it was not just soldiers attacked during September 1939 campaign examples exist of citizens being murdered and with women being raped.
The killings continued after the Soviet occupation had been completed. 200 Polish refugees were murdered at Nawóz.
With the German attack against Soviet Union, ethnic Ukrainians hoped to establish an independent Ukraine and viewed the Nazi Germany
as their liberator from the oppressive communist Soviet regime
. Some ethnic Ukrainians were amongst the collaborators and supporters of the Germans in rounding up and murdering Jews.
Numerous sources state that as soon as the Germans arrived at Lviv, some Ukrainians started to murder Jews. It is estimated in this wave of pogroms across 54 cities that 24,000 Jews were killed.
With many Jews already murdered by the Germans, some Ukrainians began to target ethnic Poles. including sometimes pregnant women and children.
Location, date and numbers of Polish citizens murdered by the Ukrainian nationalists:
It is estimated that anywhere between 200,000 and 500,000 died druring the ethnic cleansing operations.
Some Ukrainians also collaborated being guards at the concentration camps.
used mobile gas vans to murder mostly Jews and Roma. The Germans then set-up killing centres at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.
About 960,000 Jews died at Auschwitz including 438,000 from Hungary and 300,000 Polish Jews. The Polish scholar Franciszek Piper
, the chief historian of Auschwitz, estimates that 140,000 to 150,000 Poles were brought to that camp between 1940 and 1945, and that 70,000 to 75,000 died there as victims of executions, of cruel medical experiments
, and of starvation
and disease
.
s located in the territory of General Government
during World War II
, established by Nazi Germany
in Warsaw
, the prewar capital of Poland. Between 1941 and 1943, starvation
, disease
and mass deportation
s to concentration camps and extermination camps such as during the Gross-aktion Warschau, reduced the population of the ghetto
from an estimated 445,000 to approximately 71,000. In 1943 the Warsaw Ghetto was the scene of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The ghetto was reduced to rubble.
. The Gentile
population of Poland was a target of the łapanka policy, in which the forces of SS, Wehrmacht and police rounded up civilians on the street; between 1942 and 1944, there were approximately 400 victims of the łapanka in Warsaw daily. During the existence of the KL Warschau, it is estimated that tens of thousands (IPN http://www.ipn.gov.pl/aktual_2707_klw.html) of people were killed there, most of them Polish citizens of the city. Some estimates put the total at 200,000. Most of them were shot in publicised reprisal executions of hostages or died due to bad health conditions in the camp and a typhus epidemic; some were also gassed. Some historians, such as Maria Trzcińska, also postulate the existence of an enormous gas chamber
in a railway tunnel at Bem Street; however, this claim is highly controversial. The very existence of the death camp part of the compound, had been a public secret during the era of Communist rule in Poland. The reason was to inflate numbers of victims of the Warsaw Uprising, initiated by the patriotic Polish Home Army against the Germans in 1944, which was followed by massive civilian casualties inflicted by the Nazis upon the city's population (see below).
During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising
, German forces committed many atrocities against Polish civilians, following the order by Hitler to raze the city and "turn it into a lake"
.
The most severe of them took place in Wola district where, at the beginning of August 1944, tens of thousands of civilians (men, women, and children) were methodically rounded-up and executed by Einsatzkommando
of Sicherheitspolizei
operating within the SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth
group under the overall command of Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski. Executions in the Wola district, sometimes called the Wola massacre
, also included the killings of both the patients and staff of local hospitals. Victims’ bodies were then collected by the members of the Verbrennungskommando, comprising captured Polish men, and burnt. The carnage was so bad that even the German high command were stunned.
Other similar massacres took place in the areas of Śródmieście (City Centre), Old Town, Marymont, and Ochota districts. In Ochota district, civilian killings, rapes, and looting were conducted by the members of Russian
collaborators from SS-Sturmbrigade RONA. Until the end of the September 1944, Polish resistance
fighters were not considered by Germans as combatants; thus, when captured, they were summarily executed. After the fall of the Old Town, during the beginning of September, the remaining 7,000 seriously wounded hospitals’ patients were executed or burnt alive often with the medical staff caring for them. Similar atrocities took place later in the Czerniaków district. A number of captured insurgents were hanged or otherwise executed after the fall of Powiśle and Mokotów districts as well.
Timeline of Massacres during Warsaw Uprising
More than 200,000 Poles were killed in the uprising. Out of 450,000 surviving civilians, 150,000 were sent to labour camps in Germany, and 50,000 to 60,000 were shipped to death and concentration camps. After the rising had ended, the Germans continued to systematically destroy the city. The city was left in ruins. Neither Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski nor Heinz Reinefarth were ever tried for their Warsaw Uprising atrocities.
The role of Soviets is debated by historians. Questions are asked about the Soviet halting their advance on the city and denying the use of their airfields to the RAF and US air force.
The German government established seven extermination camps in occupied Poland.
These camps were as follows:
There were also concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Treblinka and Warsaw.
The concentration camps in occupied Poland were:
This list includes only camps with at least 100 prisoners.
Home Army units which fought against the Germans in support of the Soviet advance had their officers and men arrested. At Wilno and Nowogrodek the Soviets shipped to camps 1,500 officers and 5,000 other ranks.
The Home Army was made illegal. As a result it is estimated up to 40,000 Home Army were deported and many others persecuted.
In the Lublin area more than 50,000 Poles were arrested between July 1944 and June 1945.
At Baran Wood 13 bodies have been found but witnesses claim hundreds. Records show 45 of the 61 death sentences were carried out and other records 37 in October 1944 alone.
and Naliboki
.
The vast majority were civilians. The daily average in Polish lives was 2,800. Poland’s professional classes suffered higher than average casualties with Doctors (45%), lawyers (57%), University professors (40%), technicians (30%), clergy (18%) and many journalists.
It was not only Polish citizens who died at the hands of the occupying powers but many others. One estimate is 2 million people from 29 countries died in occupied Poland. This includes 1 million Jews moved to the Nazi extermination camps and 784,000 Soviet POWs.
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Most were civilians killed by the actions of Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
and their allies. At the Nuremberg Tribunal, three categories were established. These categories were waging war, war crimes and crimes against humanity. This article details war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in occupied Poland during World War II or the origin of the crime started in occupied Poland.
The German and Soviet occupation (September 1939 to June 1941)
The Soviet occupation
Only a very small minority of Polish citizens welcomed the Soviet invasion. The Soviets looked to destroy Polish self-rule using deportation of hundred of thousands of Polish citizens and forcing their system of government upon them.Effect on Polish culture
The Soviets set out to remove a thousand years of Polish cultural influences. Polish was replaced in official usage. Schools spread Soviet indoctrination and religious education was forbidden. Monuments were destroyed, street names changed, bookshops closed, libraries burned and publishers shutdown. Soviet censorship was strictly enforced. Even the ringing of church bells was banned.Effect on economy
Taxation was raised forcing religious institutions to close. The Soviets replaced the Zloty with the worthless ruble, but gave them equal value. Businesses were mandated to stay open and sell at pre-war prices, hence allowing Soviet soldiers to buy goods with rubles. Entire hospitals, schools and factories were moved to the USSR.Internment of Polish citizens (Gulag)
Polish prisoners of war
Amongst the first to suffer were the Border Defence Corps
Border Protection Corps
The Border Protection Corps was a Polish military formation that was created in 1924 to defend the country's eastern borders against armed Soviet incursions and local bandits....
. Many officers were murdered. General Olszyna-Wilczyński
Józef Olszyna-Wilczynski
Józef Konstanty Olszyna-Wilczyński was a Polish general and one of the high-ranking commanders of the Polish Army. A veteran of World War I, Polish-Ukrainian War and the Polish-Bolshevik War, he was murdered by the Soviets during the Polish Defensive War of 1939.-Early life:Józef Wilczyński was...
was shot. In the Wilno area and Polesie the officers were murdered.
In Lviv
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
the troops, including the Police force, surrendered after agreeing to terms that allowed them to travel to neutral countries (Rumania and Hungary) but the Soviet administration reneged on their agreement and they were sent to Soviet POW camps including 2,000 officers.
Soviet estimated the total captured as 9,350 officers and 181,233 soldiers.
Deportations
Population transfer in the Soviet Union
Population transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, often classified as "enemies of workers," deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite...
. The first deportation took place 10 February 1940, with more than 220,000 sent to northern European Russia; the second on 13–15 April 1940, sending 300,000 to 330,000 primarily to Kazakhstan; a third wave in June–July 1940 totaled more than 240,000 perhaps 400,000; the fourth occurred in June, 1941, deporting 200,000. The fourth wave contained a large number of children. Upon resumption of Polish-Soviet diplomatic relations in 1941, it was determined based on Soviet information that more than 760,000 of the deportees had died—a large part of those dead being children, who had comprised about a third of deportees.
As well as deporting Polish citizens, Polish men were drafted into the Soviet army. It has been estimated that 210,000 were drafted.
Katyn massacre
Katyn is one notorious massacre by the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
. The Katyn Forest is the site where 4,443 were murdered by the Soviets. Most were reserve Polish officers including political leaders, government officials, and intellectuals. The name Katyn is now associated with the systematic execution of up to 21,768 Polish citizens.
The German occupation
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
in his book Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf is a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926...
. The main axis of the plan was that all of Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
should become part of the greater Germany, the so-called German Lebensraum
Lebensraum
was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...
("living space"). The German Army
German Army
The German Army is the land component of the armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany. Following the disbanding of the Wehrmacht after World War II, it was re-established in 1955 as the Bundesheer, part of the newly formed West German Bundeswehr along with the Navy and the Air Force...
was sent, as stated by Adolf Hitler in his Armenian quote
Armenian quote
The Armenian quote is a paragraph understood to have been included in a speech by Adolf Hitler to Wehrmacht commanders at his Obersalzberg home on August 22, 1939, a week before the German invasion of Poland...
: "with orders to kill without mercy and reprieve all men, women and children of the Polish race". This could be seen as an attempt to destroy the entire nation. The Germans saw both Poles and Polish Jews as inferior to them.
Atrocities during the invasion of Poland (1939)
The Germans carried out massacres and executions from the very beginning. It is estimated that 200 executions were carried out daily. Typically, the executions were carried out in a public place such as the town square.Location, date and numbers of Polish citizens murdered:
|
Olszewo, Gmina Bransk Olszewo is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Brańsk, within Bielsk County, Podlaskie Voivodeship, in north-eastern Poland.-Massacre during World War II:... 13 September; over half the village Mielec Mielec is a city in south-eastern Poland with a population of 60,979 inhabitants, as of June 2009. It is located in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship ; previously it was in Rzeszów Voivodeship... 13 September, 55 Jews burned to death Przemysl Przemyśl is a city in south-eastern Poland with 66,756 inhabitants, as of June 2009. In 1999, it became part of the Podkarpackie Voivodeship; it was previously the capital of Przemyśl Voivodeship.... 14 September, 43 Jews shot Solec Kujawski Solec Kujawski is a town with 15,505 inhabitants and an area of 176 km², situated 14 kilometres southeast of Bydgoszcz in Poland at . Solec Kujawski belongs to the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship... 14 September, 44 Polish citizens Gzinka Gzinka is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Łyszkowice, within Łowicz County, Łódź Voivodeship, in central Poland. It lies approximately north-west of Łyszkowice, south of Łowicz, and north-east of the regional capital Łódź.... 30 September, 11 Polish citizens Dynów Dynów is a town in Rzeszów County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, Poland, with a population of 6,058 .-Massacre during Second World War:... 200 Jews Gdansk Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the... 38 Polish citizens |
As well as civilians, Polish soldiers were massacred; even on the first day of fighting, 1 September, Polish POWs were murdered at Pilchowice
Pilchowice
Pilchowice may refer to the following places in Poland:*Pilchowice, Lower Silesian Voivodeship *Pilchowice, Silesian Voivodeship...
, Czuchów, Gierałtowice, Bojków, Lubliniec
Lubliniec
Lubliniec is a town in southern Poland with 29,359 inhabitants . It is the capital of Lubliniec County, part of Silesian Voivodeship ; previously it was in Częstochowa Voivodeship .-Geography:...
, Kochcice, Zawiść, Ornontowice and Wyry
Wyry
Wyry is a village in Mikołów County, Silesian Voivodeship, in southern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Wyry. It lies approximately south of Mikołów and south-west of the regional capital Katowice....
.
The Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
also took part by strafing refugees on the road. The number of civilians wounded or killed by aerial bombing is put at over 100,000. The Luftwaffe dropped their bombs on open cities against the civilians in them. Amongst the Polish cities and towns to be bombed were
|
Piotrków Piotrków may refer to the following places in Poland:*Piotrków Trybunalski, a city in Piotrków County, Łódź Voivodeship*Piotrków Kujawski, a city in Gmina Piotrków Kujawski in Radziejów County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship... |
Over 156 towns and villages were attacked by the Luftwaffe. Warsaw suffered particularly severely with a combination of aerial bombardment and artillery fire reducing large parts of the historic centre to rubble. The Soviet Union assisted the Germans by allowing them to use a radio beacon from Minsk to guide their planes.
The Bydgoszcz incidents
The Germans as part of their anti-Polish campaign used the Bydgoszcz incidents as propaganda. Germans living in the town took anti-Polish actions including shooting at Polish soldiers. Polish soldiers shot a number of Germans for various reasons including possession of weapons. The Nazi German government claimed wholesale slaughter of Germans. Norman Davies estimated that 20,000 Poles were murdered in reprisal.Terror and crimes against intelligentsia and clergy
During the German invasion of Poland (1939)Invasion of Poland (1939)
The Invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign or 1939 Defensive War in Poland and the Poland Campaign in Germany, was an invasion of Poland by Germany, the Soviet Union, and a small Slovak contingent that marked the start of World War II in Europe...
, special action squads of SS and police (the Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
) were deployed in the rear, and arrested or killed civilians caught offering resistance against the Germans
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
or considered capable of doing so, as determined by their position and social status. Tens of thousands of government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
official
Official
An official is someone who holds an office in an organization or government and participates in the exercise of authority .A government official or functionary is an official who is involved in public...
s, landowners, clergy
Clergy
Clergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....
, and members of the intelligentsia — teacher
Teacher
A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...
s, doctors
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
s, and others (both Poles and Jews) — were either murdered in mass executions or sent to prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
s and concentration camps. German army units and paramilitary Selbstschutz
Selbstschutz
Selbstschutz stands for two organisations:# A name used by a number of paramilitary organisations created by ethnic Germans in Central and Eastern Europe# A name for self-defence measures and units in ethnic German, Austrian, and Swiss civil defence....
("self-defense") forces composed of Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
also participated in executions of civilians. The Selbstschutz, along with SS units, took an active part in the Mass murders in Piaśnica
Mass murders in Piaśnica
The mass murders in Piaśnica were a set of mass executions carried out by Germans, during World War II, between the fall of 1939 and spring of 1940 in Piasnica Wielka in the Darzlubska Wilderness near Wejherowo. Standard estimates put the number of victims at between twelve thousand and fourteen...
, in which between 12,000 and 16,000 Polish civilians were murdered.
One of the most well known examples was the deportation to concentration camps in November 1939 of 180 professors from the university of Cracow. The German occupiers launched AB-Aktion in May 1940 a plan to eliminate the Polish intelligentsia and leadership class. More than 16,000 members of the intelligentsia were murdered in Operation Tannenberg
Operation Tannenberg
Operation Tannenberg was the codename for one of the extermination actions directed at the Polish people during World War II, part of the Generalplan Ost...
alone.
The Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
was suppressed in Wartheland more harshly than elsewhere: churches were systematically closed; most priest
Priest
A priest is a person authorized to perform the sacred rites of a religion, especially as a mediatory agent between humans and deities. They also have the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities...
s were either killed, imprisoned, or deported to the General Government
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
. In the General Government, Hans Frank’s diary shows he planned a “war on the clergy”. The Germans also closed seminaries
Seminary
A seminary, theological college, or divinity school is an institution of secondary or post-secondary education for educating students in theology, generally to prepare them for ordination as clergy or for other ministry...
and convent
Convent
A convent is either a community of priests, religious brothers, religious sisters, or nuns, or the building used by the community, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion...
s and persecuted monk
Monk
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...
s and nun
Nun
A nun is a woman who has taken vows committing her to live a spiritual life. She may be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live her life in prayer and contemplation in a monastery or convent...
s. Between 1939 and 1945, an estimated 2,801 members of the Polish clergy were murdered (in all of Poland); of these, 1,926 died in concentration camps (798 of them at Dachau). One hundred and eight of them are regarded as blessed martyr
Martyr
A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
s, Maximilian Kolbe
Maximilian Kolbe
Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe OFM Conv was a Polish Conventual Franciscan friar, who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi German concentration camp of Auschwitz, located in German-occupied Poland during World War II.He was canonized on 10 October 1982 by Pope John Paul II, and...
as a saint
Saint
A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...
.
Cultural genocide and the preparations for the final solution
As part of a wider effort to destroy Polish culture, the Germans closed or destroyed universities, schoolSchool
A school is an institution designed for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools...
s, museum
Museum
A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...
s, libraries, and scientific laboratories. Polish academic institutions were turned into German establishments. Polish children were forced to attend and obey with strict punishment used. They demolished hundreds of monuments to national heroes
Folk hero
A folk hero is a type of hero, real, fictional, or mythological. The single salient characteristic which makes a character a folk hero is the imprinting of the name, personality and deeds of the character in the popular consciousness. This presence in the popular consciousness is evidenced by...
. To prevent the birth of a new generation of educated Poles, German officials decreed that the schooling of Polish children should end after a few years of elementary education.
- "The sole goal of this schooling is to teach them simple arithmetic, nothing above the number 500; writing one's name; and the doctrine that it is divine law to obey the Germans. I do not think that reading is desirable,"
At the end of October 1939, the Germans introduced the death penalty for disobedience to the German occupation.
It was the German plan to move Poles to Siberia. Himmler wrote a memorandum
Memorandum
A memorandum is from the Latin verbal phrase memorandum est, the gerundive form of the verb memoro, "to mention, call to mind, recount, relate", which means "It must be remembered ..."...
in May 1940. In it he promised to deport all Poles to the east [Russia]. Plans for mass transportation and slave labor camps for up to 20 million Poles were made. All were intended to die during the cultivation of the swamps.
During the war, Himmler in his capacity as Reich Commissioner oversaw the kidnapping of Polish children to be Germanized. The German also took approximately 50,000, some estimate are as high as 200,000, Polish children from their families. They were sent to the Reich to be subject to "Germanisation". Many of the children were not recovered and remained in Germany.
German massacres
- Otorowo 20 October - 5 Poles or 19 Poles
- Szamotuły 20 October - 5 Poles
- WarsawWarsawWarsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
22 November - 53 Jews - WawerWawerWawer is one of the districts of Warsaw, located in the south-eastern part of the city. The Vistula river runs along its western border. Wawer became a district of Warsaw on October 27, 2002 .Wawer borders Praga Południe and Rembertów from the north, Wesoła from the east and Wilanów with Mokotów...
27 December – 106 murdered or 107 murdered - PalmiryPalmiryPalmiry During World War II, between 1939 and 1943, the village and the surrounding forest was one of the sites of German mass executions of Jews, Polish intelligentsia, politicians and athletes, killed during the AB Action. Most of the victims were first arrested and tortured in the Pawiak prison...
December 1940 to July 1941 - 2,000 Poles - KościanKoscianKościan is a town on the Obra canal in west-central Poland, with a population of 24 059 inhabitants in June 2009. Situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship , previously in Leszno Voivodeship , it is the capital of Kościan County...
- 50 Poles including parish priest - KościanKoscianKościan is a town on the Obra canal in west-central Poland, with a population of 24 059 inhabitants in June 2009. Situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship , previously in Leszno Voivodeship , it is the capital of Kościan County...
- 75 Poles - GnieznoGnieznoGniezno is a city in central-western Poland, some 50 km east of Poznań, inhabited by about 70,000 people. One of the Piasts' chief cities, it was mentioned by 10th century A.D. sources as the capital of Piast Poland however the first capital of Piast realm was most likely Giecz built around...
- 15 Polish citizens including Father Zabłocki - Bydgoszcz - 136 Polish school boys with about 6,000 others by end of 1939
- LesznoLesznoLeszno is a town in central Poland with 63,955 inhabitants . Situated in the southern part of the Greater Poland Voivodeship since 1999, it was previously the capital of the Leszno Voivodeship . The town has county status.-History:...
- 250 Poles - ŚremSremŚrem is a town on the Warta river in central Poland. It has been situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship since 1999; from 1975 to 1998 it was part of the Poznań Voivodeship...
- 118 Poles - WolsztynWolsztynWolsztyn is a town in western Poland, on the western edge of Greater Poland Voivodeship...
- A group of Poles - KórnikKórnikKórnik is a town with about 6,800 inhabitants , located in western Poland, approximately south-east of the city of Poznań. It is one of the major tourist attractions of the Wielkopolska region....
- 16 Polish citizens - TrzemesznoTrzemesznoTrzemeszno is a town in central Poland belonging to the group of the oldest settlements in the region. The town’s name derives from an Old Polish word “Trzemcha” meaning the flower of the "Bird’s Cherry" plant, which once grew in the vicinity...
- 30 Polish citizens - MogilnoMogilnoMogilno is a town in central Poland, situated in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship , previously in Bydgoszcz Voivodeship .-History:...
- 30 Polish citizens or 39 Poles and one Jew - Antoninek - 20 Polish citizens
Other sites include: Rawicz
Rawicz
Rawicz is a town in central Poland with 21,398 inhabitants . It is situated in the Greater Poland Voivodeship ; previously it was in Leszno Voivodeship . It is the capital of Rawicz County.-History:...
, Grodzisk Wielkopolski
Grodzisk Wielkopolski
Grodzisk Wielkopolski is a town in western Poland, in Greater Poland Voivodeship , with a population of 13,703 . It is south-west of Poznań, the voivodeship capital. It is the seat of Grodzisk Wielkopolski County, and also of the smaller administrative district called Gmina Grodzisk Wielkopolski...
, Nowy Tomyśl
Nowy Tomysl
Nowy Tomyśl is a town in western Poland, in Greater Poland Voivodeship. It is the capital of Nowy Tomyśl County. The population is 15,627 ....
, Międzychód
Miedzychód
Międzychód is a town in Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland, about 75 km west of Poznań. It is the capital of Międzychód County. Population is 10,920 .-Notable residents:* Manuel Joël , philosopher...
, Żnin
Żnin
Żnin is a small town in Poland with a population of 14,558 . It is in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship and is the capital of Żnin County. The town is situated in the historic land of Pałuki and the Gniezno Lake Area on the river Gąsawka.-Etymology:The name originates from the Polish word...
, Września
Wrzesnia
Września is a town in central Poland with 28,600 inhabitants . It is situated in the Września County, Greater Poland Voivodeship , previously in Poznań Voivodeship , on the Wrzesnica River.- History :...
, Chełmno, Chojnice
Chojnice
Chojnice is a town in northern Poland with 39 670 inhabitants , near famous Tuchola Forest, Lake Charzykowskie and many other water reservoirs. It is the capital of the Chojnice County....
, Kalisz
Kalisz
Kalisz is a city in central Poland with 106,857 inhabitants , the capital city of the Kalisz Region. Situated on the Prosna river in the southeastern part of the Greater Poland Voivodeship, the city forms a conurbation with the nearby towns of Ostrów Wielkopolski and Nowe Skalmierzyce...
and Włocławek.
Germanisation of Polish land
Germanisation of annexed Polish land
In the Wartheland, the Nazis' goal was complete Germanization: to assimilate the territories politically, culturally, socially, and economically into the German Reich
Reich
Reich is a German word cognate with the English rich, but also used to designate an empire, realm, or nation. The qualitative connotation from the German is " sovereign state." It is the word traditionally used for a variety of sovereign entities, including Germany in many periods of its history...
. Germans closed elementary schools where Polish was the language taught. Streets and cities were renamed so that Łódź became Litzmannstadt, for example. Tens of thousands of Polish enterprises
Company
A company is a form of business organization. It is an association or collection of individual real persons and/or other companies, who each provide some form of capital. This group has a common purpose or focus and an aim of gaining profits. This collection, group or association of persons can be...
, from large industrial firms to small shops, were seized without payment to the owners. Signs posted in public places warned: "Entrance forbidden for Poles, Jews, and dogs."
The Germans planned to change ownership of all property in the land incorporated into the Third Reich. In a speech to German colonist, Arthur Greiser
Arthur Greiser
Arthur Greiser was a Nazi German politician and SS Obergruppenfuhrer. He was one of the persons primarily responsible for organizing the Holocaust in Poland and numerous other war crimes and crimes against humanity, for which he was tried, convicted and executed by hanging after World War...
said "In ten years there will not even be a peasant smallholding which will not be in German hands". This force resettlement affected 2 million Poles. Families were made in the severe winter of 1939-40 to leave behind almost everything without any recompense. As part of Operation Tannenburg alone, 750,000 Polish peasants were forced and their property given to Germans. A further 330,000 were murdered.
Jews were treated slightly differently as they were gathered together into ghettos in the cities. Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
ordered all Jews in the annexed lands to be deported to central Poland. In winter 1939-40, about 100,000 Jews were thus deported.
Extermination of psychiatric patients
In July 1939, a Nazi secret program called T-4 Euthanasia Program was developed with the intention of exterminating physically or mentally handicapped people. During the German invasion of Poland, the programme was put into practice in the occupied Polish territories. Initially, it was implemented according to the following plan: a German director took control over the psychiatric hospitalPsychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...
; under the threat of execution, no patient could be released from the hospital; and all patients were counted and transported by trucks to an unknown destination. Each truck was accompanied by armed soldiers from special SS detachments who returned without the patients after a few hours. The patients were said to be transferred to another hospital, but evidence showed that they had been killed. The first action of this type took place in Kocborowo, at a large psychiatric hospital in the Gdańsk
Gdansk
Gdańsk is a Polish city on the Baltic coast, at the centre of the country's fourth-largest metropolitan area.The city lies on the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay , in a conurbation with the city of Gdynia, spa town of Sopot, and suburban communities, which together form a metropolitan area called the...
region on 22 September 1939. Along with their patients, six hospital employees, including a deputy director, were murdered by a firing squad. By December, 1,800 patients from Kocborowo had been murdered and buried in the forest of Szpegawski. In total, 7,000 were buried in the forest of Szpegawski. Similar exterminations took place in October 1939 in a hospital in Owińska, near Poznań
Poznan
Poznań is a city on the Warta river in west-central Poland, with a population of 556,022 in June 2009. It is among the oldest cities in Poland, and was one of the most important centres in the early Polish state, whose first rulers were buried at Poznań's cathedral. It is sometimes claimed to be...
, where 1,000 patients (children and adults) were killed.
In addition to the executions by firing squad, other methods of mass murder were also used. Patients at a psychiatric hospital in Owińska were transported to a military fortress in Poznań where, in Fort VII
Fort VII
Fort VII, officially Konzentrationslager Posen , was a Nazi concentration camp set up in Poznań in occupied Poland during World War II, located in one of the 19th-century forts which ringed the city...
bunker
Bunker
A military bunker is a hardened shelter, often buried partly or fully underground, designed to protect the inhabitants from falling bombs or other attacks...
s, they were gassed by carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide , also called carbonous oxide, is a colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas that is slightly lighter than air. It is highly toxic to humans and animals in higher quantities, although it is also produced in normal animal metabolism in low quantities, and is thought to have some normal...
, approximately 50 persons at a time. Other Owińska hospital patients were gassed in sealed trucks by the carbon monoxide of the exhaust fumes. The same method was performed in Kochanówek Hospital near Łódź where, between March–August 1940, 2,200 persons were killed. This was the first "successful" test of mass murder using gas poisoning and this "technique" was later used and perfected on many other psychiatric patients in occupied Poland and Germany and, starting in 1941, on inmates of the extermination camps. The total number of psychiatric patients murdered by the Nazis in occupied Poland between 1939-1945 is estimated to be more than 16,000, with an additional 10,000 patients who died of malnutrition
Malnutrition
Malnutrition is the condition that results from taking an unbalanced diet in which certain nutrients are lacking, in excess , or in the wrong proportions....
. Additionally, approximately 100 out of 243 members of the pre-war Polish Psychiatric Association met the same fate as their patients. Nazi terror was aimed at the complete reconstruction of society. Jews were to disappear; Poles were to become slaves of Greater Germany. Therefore the leadership of Poles: political, economic and religious, were to be murdered, while the bulk of the population were stripped of any rights and given no education or health care. To explain the policy of terror for German society at home and abroad, some pretext was necessary. Some of the alleged causes were revenge for Bloody Sunday, reaction to Polish resistance
Polish resistance movement in World War II
The Polish resistance movement in World War II, with the Home Army at its forefront, was the largest underground resistance in all of Nazi-occupied Europe, covering both German and Soviet zones of occupation. The Polish defence against the Nazi occupation was an important part of the European...
activities and the political agenda of the fanatical Nazi leadership.
Forced labour
All Polish males were required to perform forced labor. Between 1939 and 1945, at least 1.5 million Polish citizens were transported to the Reich for forced labour, against their will. One estimate has 1 million (including POWs) from annexed lands and 1.28 million from the General Government. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs believes the figure was more than two and half million during the war. Many were teenage boys and girls. Although Germany also used forced labourers from Western EuropeWestern Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
, Poles, along with other Eastern Europeans viewed as inferior, were subject to especially harsh discriminatory measures. They were forced to wear identifying purple Ps sewn to their clothing, subjected to a curfew
Curfew
A curfew is an order specifying a time after which certain regulations apply. Examples:# An order by a government for certain persons to return home daily before a certain time...
, and banned from public transport
Public transport
Public transport is a shared passenger transportation service which is available for use by the general public, as distinct from modes such as taxicab, car pooling or hired buses which are not shared by strangers without private arrangement.Public transport modes include buses, trolleybuses, trams...
. While the treatment of factory workers or farm hands often varied depending on the individual employer, Polish laborers as a rule were compelled to work longer hours for lower wages than Western Europeans and, in many cities, they were forced to live in segregated
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
barracks
Barracks
Barracks are specialised buildings for permanent military accommodation; the word may apply to separate housing blocks or to complete complexes. Their main object is to separate soldiers from the civilian population and reinforce discipline, training and esprit de corps. They were sometimes called...
behind barbed wire
Barbed wire
Barbed wire, also known as barb wire , is a type of fencing wire constructed with sharp edges or points arranged at intervals along the strand. It is used to construct inexpensive fences and is used atop walls surrounding secured property...
. Social relations with Germans outside work were forbidden and sexual relations with them were considered "racial defilement
Rassenschande
Rassenschande or Blutschande was the Nazi term for sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans, which was punishable by law...
", punishable by death. During the war, hundreds of Polish men were executed for their relations with German women.
Concentration camps
Polish citizens, especially Ethnic Poles and Polish Jews, were prisoners in nearly every camp of the extensive concentration camp systemNazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
in German-occupied Poland and the Reich. A major labour camp complex at Stutthof
Stutthof
Stutthof can refer to:*Sztutowo in Poland*Stutthof concentration camp built near Sztutowo...
, east of Gdańsk/Danzig, existed from September, 1939 to the end of the war, where an estimated 20,000 Poles died as a result of executions, hard labour, and harsh conditions. Some 100,000 Poles were deported to Majdanek
Majdanek
Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army...
, and tens of thousands of them died there. An estimated 20,000 Poles died at Sachsenhausen
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...
, 20,000 at Gross-Rosen, 30,000 at Mauthausen
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
Mauthausen Concentration Camp grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that was built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly east of the city of Linz.Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time and by the summer of 1940, the...
, 17,000 at Neuengamme, 10,000 at Dachau, and 17,000 at Ravensbrück. In addition, tens of thousands of Polish people were executed or died in their thousands in other camps, including special children's camps such as in Łódź and its subcamp at Dzierżan, in prisons and other places of detention inside and outside Poland.
Auschwitz concentration camp
The Auschwitz concentration camp went into operation on 14 June 1940. The first transport of 728 Polish prisoners consisted mostly of schoolchildren, students and soldiers from an overcrowded prison at Tarnów
Tarnów
Tarnów is a city in southeastern Poland with 115,341 inhabitants as of June 2009. The city has been situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship since 1999, but from 1975 to 1998 it was the capital of the Tarnów Voivodeship. It is a major rail junction, located on the strategic east-west connection...
. Within a week another 313 arrived. There were major transports in August (1,666) and September (1,705). This so called “Polish” phase lasted until the middle of 1942. By March 1941, 10,900 prisoners were registered at the camp, most of them Poles.
The treatment of Polish Jews
The Ethnic Poles were subject to selective persecution but all Ethnic Jews were targeted. It is estimated that during the first 55 days of the occupation that 5,000 Jews were killed. Still initially Ethnic Poles were murdered at a greater rate than Jews. Polish Jews over the age of 12 or 14 were forced to wear the Star of David.The Germans inside occupied Poland created some 400 ghettos in which they forced Jews to live. These ghettos were part of the German policy of removing Jews from Europe. The combination of excess numbers, unsanitary conditions and lack of food create a high death rate. The first ghetto was established in October 1939 at Piotrków. Initially the ghettos were open but on 1 May the Łódź ghetto was closed by Germans sealing the Jews inside. The Warsaw ghetto was closed in November 1940. The Germans started a reservation for Jews near Lublin.
The Germans tried to divide the Poles from the Jews using cruel laws, such as Poles buying from Jewish shops were subject to execution. Maria Brodacka became the first Pole to be killed by the Germans for helping a Jew. The Germans used the incident to kill 100 Jews being held as hostages. At the start of the war 1,335 Poles were killed for sheltering Jews.
Towards the end of 1942, the mass extermination of Polish Jews had started with deportation to the death camps of others outside Poland.
Soviet executions of their prisoners June/July 1941
Following the German attack against Soviet forces in eastern Poland, the Soviet panicked and executed their prisoners. Stalin ordered the execution of those believed to have spied on the Soviet Union. One estimate put the death toll in the prisons at up to 30,000. There may be as many as 100,000 victims at the Soviets hands as they retreated. Another estimate puts the total at 120,000 for those killed in prisons or during the flight. The following is a partial list of prisons and other places were executions took place.
|
|
It was not only prisoners who were murdered by NKVD as the Soviets retreated. Other Soviet crimes included:
- Brzeżany – Soviet soldiers threw hand grenades into homes.
- Czortków – Four priests, three brothers and a tertiary murdered
German massacres
JózefówJózefów
Józefów is a very common placename in Poland.Towns:* Józefów in Masovian Voivodeship, near Warsaw*Józefów, Biłgoraj County in Lublin Voivodeship Villages:...
Massacre – 1500 Jews (elderly, women and children only)
By 1943, it was common for the population to be subject to mass murder.
Massacres committed by Poles
The Jedwabne pogrom (or Jedwabne massacre) was a massacre of Jewish people living in and near the town of JedwabneJedwabne
Jedwabne is a town in Poland, in the Podlaskie Voivodeship, in Łomża County, with 1,942 inhabitants .- History :First mentioned in 1455, Jedwabne received city rights on July 17, 1736, from the Polish king August III, including the right to hold weekly markets on Sundays and five country fairs a...
in Poland that took place in July 1941 during World War II. The official investigation of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance confirmed that the crime was "committed directly by Poles
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
, but inspired by the Germans
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
." Similar events occurred at Radziłów and Wąsosz
Wasosz pogrom
The Wąsosz pogrom was the mass murder of Jewish residents of Wąsosz in Nazi German occupied Poland that took place on July 7, 1941, during World War II.- Circumstances surrounding the pogrom :...
.
Some Poles have also murdered ethnic Ukrainians such as the case of Pawłokoma. There are also claims of smaller scale killings of ethnic Lithuanians
Dubingiai massacre
The Dubingiai massacre was the mass murder of between 20 and 27 Lithuanian civilians in the town of Dubingiai on 23 June 1944, by a unit of the Armia Krajowa, a Polish resistance group, in a reprisal action for the Glinciszki massacre of 20 June.-Background:Polish-Lithuanian relations during the...
.
Ukrainian collaboration and massacres
For many years, the knowledge of Ukrainian massacres of ethnic Poles and Jews committed by some Ukrainians was suppressed.Amongst the first to suffer were units of the Polish army fleeing the Germans. However it was not just soldiers attacked during September 1939 campaign examples exist of citizens being murdered and with women being raped.
The killings continued after the Soviet occupation had been completed. 200 Polish refugees were murdered at Nawóz.
With the German attack against Soviet Union, ethnic Ukrainians hoped to establish an independent Ukraine and viewed the Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
as their liberator from the oppressive communist Soviet regime
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Some ethnic Ukrainians were amongst the collaborators and supporters of the Germans in rounding up and murdering Jews.
Numerous sources state that as soon as the Germans arrived at Lviv, some Ukrainians started to murder Jews. It is estimated in this wave of pogroms across 54 cities that 24,000 Jews were killed.
With many Jews already murdered by the Germans, some Ukrainians began to target ethnic Poles. including sometimes pregnant women and children.
Location, date and numbers of Polish citizens murdered by the Ukrainian nationalists:
- 15 March 1942 - Koszyszcze - Ukrainians police with Germans: 145 Poles, 19 Ukrainians, 7 Jews and 9 Soviets
- April, 1942 – Antonówska – 9 Poles
- September, 1942 – Aleksandrówka – 6 Poles
- November, 1942 – Rozyszcze – 4 Poles
- December, 1942 – Zalesie – 9 Poles
- 16 December 1942 – Jezierce – 280 Poles
- 3 March 1943 – Borszczówka – Ukrainians police with Germans: 130 Poles including 42 children
- 18 March 1943 – In three locations (Pienki, Pendyki Duze & Pendyki Male) – 180 Poles
- 18 March 1943 – Melnytsa - Ukrainians police with Germans: about 80 Poles
- 25 March 1943 – Lipniki – 170 Poles
- 13 April 1943 – Huta Majdanska – 175 Poles
- 22–23 April 1943 – Zabara – 750 Poles
- 24 April 1943 – Huta Antonowiecka – Around 600 Poles
- 5 May 1943 – Klepachiv – 42 Poles
- 7–8 May 1943 – Katerynivka – 28 Poles, 10 Jews and 2 mixed Polish-Ukrainian families
- 29 May 1943 – Stsryki – At least 90 Poles
- 2 June 1943 – Hurby – about 250 Poles
- 22 June 1943 – Górna Kolonia – 76 Poles
- 11 July 1943 – Rudnia – About 100 Poles
- 11 July 1943 – Gucin – Around 140 or 146 Poles
- 11 July 1943 – Kalusiv – 107 Poles
- 11 July 1943 - Wolczak – Around 490 Poles
- 11 July 1943 – Orzesyn – 306 Poles
- 11 July 1943 – Khryniv – Around 200 Poles
- 11 July 1943 – Zablocce – 76 Poles
- 11 July 1943 – Mikolajpol – More than 50 Poles
- 11 July 1943 – Jeziorany Szlachecki – 43 Poles
- 11 July 1943 – Krymno – Poles who had gathered for mass were murdered
- 22 July 1943 – Dymitrivka – 43 Poles
- August, 1943 – Ternopil – 43 Poles
- 1 August 1943 – Andrzejówka – Scores of Poles murdered
- 14 August 1943 – Kisielówka – 87 Poles
- 30 August 1943 - Budy Ossowski – 205 Poles including 80 children
- 30 August 1943 – Czmykos – 240 Poles murdered
- September, 1943 – Ternopol – 61 Poles
- 13 September 1943 – Beheta – 20 Poles
- October, 1943 – Ternopil – 93 Poles
- 16 October 1943 – Lusze – Two Polish families murdered
- November, 1943 – Ternopil – 127 Poles
- November, 1943 – A large number of settlements destroyed
- 6 December 1943 – Stezarzyce – 23 Poles
- December, 1943 – Ternopil – 409 Poles
- January, 1944 – Ternopil – 446 Poles
It is estimated that anywhere between 200,000 and 500,000 died druring the ethnic cleansing operations.
Some Ukrainians also collaborated being guards at the concentration camps.
The Holocaust in occupied Poland
The first German death camps in occupied Poland were started in late 1941. The Chelmno extermination campChelmno extermination camp
Chełmno extermination camp, also known as the Kulmhof concentration camp, was a Nazi German extermination camp that was situated 50 kilometres from Łódź, near a small village called Chełmno nad Nerem . After annexation by Germany Kulmhof was included into Reichsgau Wartheland in 1939...
used mobile gas vans to murder mostly Jews and Roma. The Germans then set-up killing centres at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka.
Auschwitz concentration camp
In September 1941, 200 ill prisoners, most of them Poles, along with 600 Soviet POWs, were killed in the first gassing experiments at Auschwitz. Beginning in 1942, Auschwitz's prisoner population became much more diverse, as Jews and other "enemies of the state" from all over German-occupied Europe were deported to the camp.About 960,000 Jews died at Auschwitz including 438,000 from Hungary and 300,000 Polish Jews. The Polish scholar Franciszek Piper
Franciszek Piper
Franciszek Piper is a Polish scholar, historian and author. Most of his work concerns the Jewish Holocaust, especially the history of the concentration camps at Auschwitz. Dr. Piper is credited as one of the historians who helped establish a more accurate number of victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau...
, the chief historian of Auschwitz, estimates that 140,000 to 150,000 Poles were brought to that camp between 1940 and 1945, and that 70,000 to 75,000 died there as victims of executions, of cruel medical experiments
Human experimentation
Human subject research includes experiments and observational studies. Human subjects are commonly participants in research on basic biology, clinical medicine, nursing, psychology, and all other social sciences. Humans have been participants in research since the earliest studies...
, and of starvation
Starvation
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy, nutrient and vitamin intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death...
and disease
Disease
A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...
.
Łódź Ghetto
From 1940 to 1944, it is estimated starvation and disease caused the death of 43,000 Jews in the ghetto. Most of the rest died in the German death camps.Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the Jewish ghettoGhetto
A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...
s located in the territory of General Government
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, established by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, the prewar capital of Poland. Between 1941 and 1943, starvation
Starvation
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy, nutrient and vitamin intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death...
, disease
Disease
A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...
and mass deportation
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
s to concentration camps and extermination camps such as during the Gross-aktion Warschau, reduced the population of the ghetto
Ghetto
A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...
from an estimated 445,000 to approximately 71,000. In 1943 the Warsaw Ghetto was the scene of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The ghetto was reduced to rubble.
Warsaw concentration camp
From 1943 until 1944, the Warsaw concentration camp (Konzentrationslager Warschau) worked as a death camp to exterminate the Polish population of WarsawWarsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
. The Gentile
Gentile
The term Gentile refers to non-Israelite peoples or nations in English translations of the Bible....
population of Poland was a target of the łapanka policy, in which the forces of SS, Wehrmacht and police rounded up civilians on the street; between 1942 and 1944, there were approximately 400 victims of the łapanka in Warsaw daily. During the existence of the KL Warschau, it is estimated that tens of thousands (IPN http://www.ipn.gov.pl/aktual_2707_klw.html) of people were killed there, most of them Polish citizens of the city. Some estimates put the total at 200,000. Most of them were shot in publicised reprisal executions of hostages or died due to bad health conditions in the camp and a typhus epidemic; some were also gassed. Some historians, such as Maria Trzcińska, also postulate the existence of an enormous gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
in a railway tunnel at Bem Street; however, this claim is highly controversial. The very existence of the death camp part of the compound, had been a public secret during the era of Communist rule in Poland. The reason was to inflate numbers of victims of the Warsaw Uprising, initiated by the patriotic Polish Home Army against the Germans in 1944, which was followed by massive civilian casualties inflicted by the Nazis upon the city's population (see below).
Warsaw Uprising atrocities
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance Home Army , to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany. The rebellion was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union's Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the retreat of German forces...
, German forces committed many atrocities against Polish civilians, following the order by Hitler to raze the city and "turn it into a lake"
Planned destruction of Warsaw
The planned destruction of Warsaw refers to the largely realised plans by Nazi Germany to completely raze the city. The plan was put into full motion after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944...
.
The most severe of them took place in Wola district where, at the beginning of August 1944, tens of thousands of civilians (men, women, and children) were methodically rounded-up and executed by Einsatzkommando
Einsatzkommando
During World War II, the Nazi German Einsatzkommandos were a sub-group of five Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads—up to 3,000 men each—usually composed of 500-1,000 functionaries of the SS and Gestapo, whose mission was to kill Jews, Romani, communists and the NKVD collaborators in the captured...
of Sicherheitspolizei
Sicherheitspolizei
The Sicherheitspolizei , often abbreviated as SiPo, was a term used in Nazi Germany to describe the state political and criminal investigation security agencies. It was made up by the combined forces of the Gestapo and the Kripo between 1936 and 1939...
operating within the SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth
Heinz Reinefarth
Heinrich Reinefarth was a German military officer during and government official after World War II. During the Warsaw Uprising his troops committed numerous war atrocities. After the war Reinefarth became the mayor of the town of Westerland and member of the Schleswig-Holstein Landtag...
group under the overall command of Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski. Executions in the Wola district, sometimes called the Wola massacre
Wola massacre
The Wola massacre was the scene of the largest single massacre in the history of Poland. According to different sources, some 40,000 to 100,000 Polish civilians and POWs were killed by the German forces during their suppression of the Warsaw Uprising...
, also included the killings of both the patients and staff of local hospitals. Victims’ bodies were then collected by the members of the Verbrennungskommando, comprising captured Polish men, and burnt. The carnage was so bad that even the German high command were stunned.
Other similar massacres took place in the areas of Śródmieście (City Centre), Old Town, Marymont, and Ochota districts. In Ochota district, civilian killings, rapes, and looting were conducted by the members of Russian
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
collaborators from SS-Sturmbrigade RONA. Until the end of the September 1944, Polish resistance
Polish resistance movement in World War II
The Polish resistance movement in World War II, with the Home Army at its forefront, was the largest underground resistance in all of Nazi-occupied Europe, covering both German and Soviet zones of occupation. The Polish defence against the Nazi occupation was an important part of the European...
fighters were not considered by Germans as combatants; thus, when captured, they were summarily executed. After the fall of the Old Town, during the beginning of September, the remaining 7,000 seriously wounded hospitals’ patients were executed or burnt alive often with the medical staff caring for them. Similar atrocities took place later in the Czerniaków district. A number of captured insurgents were hanged or otherwise executed after the fall of Powiśle and Mokotów districts as well.
Timeline of Massacres during Warsaw Uprising
- 2 August - Rakowiecka Street Prison – about 500 prisoners and Jesuits murdered
- 2 August - Ochota - Germans murder all their hostages
- 2 August - Old Town - 300 patients are murdered
- 4 August - Ochota – Start of massacre residents
- 5 August - Wola – Start of massacre of residents. In total 10,000, 20,000 or 40,000 residents murdered.
- 5 August - Wolski Hospital – about 360 patients and personnel murdered
- 5 August - St. Lazarus Hospital – about 1,000 patients and personnel murdered
- 6 August - Karola i Marii Hospital – over 100 patients murdered
- 8 August - Old Town - Germans set fire to historic buildings in the Old Town
- 10 August - Ochota - Brigade SS-RONA are continuing to kill residents
- 13 August - Old Town – Explosion kills 350, mostly civilians
- 28 August - Polish Security Printing Works - Injured, field hospital staff and civilians sheltered in the basement are murdered
- 29 August - Unknown - Germans murder old people and invalids from a captured municipal shelter
- 2 September - Old Town – 7,000 civilians are murdered
More than 200,000 Poles were killed in the uprising. Out of 450,000 surviving civilians, 150,000 were sent to labour camps in Germany, and 50,000 to 60,000 were shipped to death and concentration camps. After the rising had ended, the Germans continued to systematically destroy the city. The city was left in ruins. Neither Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski nor Heinz Reinefarth were ever tried for their Warsaw Uprising atrocities.
The role of Soviets is debated by historians. Questions are asked about the Soviet halting their advance on the city and denying the use of their airfields to the RAF and US air force.
List of internment sites for Polish citizens (German concentration and death camps)
Below is an incomplete list of sites, where Polish citizens, detained, imprisoned, forced into slave labour, and exterminated were found both on Polish territory and outside it.Extermination camps
The German government established seven extermination camps in occupied Poland.
These camps were as follows:
- Auschwitz-Birkenau
- BelzecBelzec extermination campBelzec, Polish spelling Bełżec , was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust...
- Kulmhof
- MajdanekMajdanekMajdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army...
- SobibórSobibór extermination campSobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp located on the outskirts of the town of Sobibór, Lublin Voivodeship of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor...
- TreblinkaTreblinka extermination campTreblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women...
- WarschauWarsaw concentration campThe Warsaw concentration camp was an associated group of the German Nazi concentration camps, possibly including an extermination camp, located in German-occupied Warsaw, capital city of Poland...
Concentration camps adjoining extermination camps
There were also concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Treblinka and Warsaw.
Concentration camps
The concentration camps in occupied Poland were:
- Gross-Rosen in German Silesia but now part of Poland
- Janowska
- Kraków-Płaszów
- PoniatowaPoniatowaPoniatowa is a town in southeastern Poland, in Opole Lubelskie County, in Lublin Voivodship, with 10,500 inhabitants .-Historical antecedents:A village named Poniatowa had existed near the site of the present town for about 750 years...
- Skarżysko-KamiennaSkarzysko-KamiennaSkarżysko-Kamienna is a town in northern Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship in Poland by Kamienna river, to the north of Świętokrzyskie Mountains; one of the voivodship's major towns...
- SoldauSoldau concentration campThe Soldau concentration camp was a concentration camp established by Nazi Germany during World War II in Działdowo , which after the occupation of Poland was part of East Prussia....
- StutthofStutthof concentration campStutthof was the first Nazi concentration camp built outside of 1937 German borders.Completed on September 2, 1939, it was located in a secluded, wet, and wooded area west of the small town of Sztutowo . The town is located in the former territory of the Free City of Danzig, 34 km east of...
- TrawnikiTrawniki concentration campTrawniki concentration camp, in the village of Trawniki about 40 km southeast of Lublin in Poland, was an SS labour camp which provided forced labourers for a nearby industrial plant to work in appalling conditions with little food...
Labour camps
This list includes only camps with at least 100 prisoners.
|
Janów Lubelski Janów Lubelski is a town in eastern Poland. It has 11,882 inhabitants .Situated in the Lublin Voivodship . It is the capital of Janów Lubelski County.It has a large hospital... Kacprowice Kacprowice is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Wolanów, within Radom County, Masovian Voivodeship, in east-central Poland.-References:... Katowice Katowice is a city in Silesia in southern Poland, on the Kłodnica and Rawa rivers . Katowice is located in the Silesian Highlands, about north of the Silesian Beskids and about southeast of the Sudetes Mountains.It is the central district of the Upper Silesian Metropolis, with a population of 2... Kazimierza Wielka Kazimierza Wielka is a town in Poland, in Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship, about 45 km northeast of Kraków. It is the administrative seat of Kazimierza County . Population is 5,848 .-Education:* * *... Kazimierz Dolny Kazimierz Dolny is a small town in Central Poland, on the right bank of the Vistula river in Puławy County, Lublin Province.It is a considerable tourist attraction as one of the most beautifully situated little towns in Poland. It enjoyed its greatest prosperity in the 16th and the first half of... Koronowo Koronowo is a town on the Brda River in Poland, located in the Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, 25 km from Bydgoszcz, with 10,818 inhabitants . It is located at N 53°19 - E 17°56... Mircze Mircze is a village in Hrubieszów County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland, close to the border with Ukraine. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Mircze. It lies approximately south of Hrubieszów and south-east of the regional capital Lublin.The village has a population of... |
Nowe Nowe is a town in Świecie County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland, with 6,270 inhabitants .... Nowy Sacz Nowy Sącz is a town in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship in southern Poland. It is the district capital of Nowy Sącz County, but is not included within the powiat.-Names:... Potulice Potulice is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Nakło nad Notecią, within Nakło County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, in north-central Poland. It lies approximately south-east of Nakło nad Notecią and west of Bydgoszcz... Rachanie Rachanie is a village in Tomaszów Lubelski County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina called Gmina Rachanie. It lies approximately north-east of Tomaszów Lubelski and south-east of the regional capital Lublin.The village has a population of 990.-References:... Starachowice Starachowice is a town in south-central Poland with 55,126 inhabitants . Starachowice is situated in the Świętokrzyskie Voivodeship ; it was formerly in the Kielce Voivodeship . It is the capital of Starachowice County... Tarnogród Tarnogród is a town in Biłgoraj County, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland. It has a population of 3,399 .The history of the town dates back to the Middle Ages settlement, then known as Cierniogród... Nowy Wisnicz Nowy Wiśnicz is a small town in Bochnia County, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, Poland, with 2,724 inhabitants . It is located 4 miles south of Bochnia.-Former structures:... Zarudzie Zarudzie is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Nielisz, within Zamość County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland. It lies approximately north-west of Zamość and south-east of the regional capital Lublin.-References:... |
More deportations
With the return of the Soviets, the killings and deportations started again. Stalin assumed the AK (Home Army) would try to stop his goal of controlling Poland hence set out to destroy them. They were accused of having Germans spies in their ranks, trying to take control of the Polish units fighting with the Red army and causing desertions.Home Army units which fought against the Germans in support of the Soviet advance had their officers and men arrested. At Wilno and Nowogrodek the Soviets shipped to camps 1,500 officers and 5,000 other ranks.
The Home Army was made illegal. As a result it is estimated up to 40,000 Home Army were deported and many others persecuted.
In the Lublin area more than 50,000 Poles were arrested between July 1944 and June 1945.
More Soviet massacres
It is suspected that the NKVD carried out killings in the Turza Wood. 17 bodies have been found. Estimates put the total at 600.At Baran Wood 13 bodies have been found but witnesses claim hundreds. Records show 45 of the 61 death sentences were carried out and other records 37 in October 1944 alone.
List of internment sites for Polish citizens (Gulags, other concentration camps and prisons)
Jewish collaboration and massacres
Polish Jews suffered amongst the most of any during World War II but still accusions exist against them. The most famous are the massacres at KoniuchyKoniuchy massacre
The Koniuchy massacre was a massacre of civilians carried out by a Soviet partisan unit along with a contingent of Jewish partisans under their command during the Second World War in the Polish village of Koniuchy on January 29, 1944.-Massacre:A small local self defence unit was created to defend...
and Naliboki
Naliboki massacre
The Naliboki massacre was the mass killing of about 128 Poles by Soviet partisans at the village of Naliboki in Nazi-occupied Poland on May 8, 1943....
.
Casualties
Poland is now estimated to have lost between 4.9 and 5.7 million citizens at the hands of the Germans. Betweeem 150,000 - 1 million more died at the hands of the Soviets. In total, about 6 million Polish citizens died.The vast majority were civilians. The daily average in Polish lives was 2,800. Poland’s professional classes suffered higher than average casualties with Doctors (45%), lawyers (57%), University professors (40%), technicians (30%), clergy (18%) and many journalists.
It was not only Polish citizens who died at the hands of the occupying powers but many others. One estimate is 2 million people from 29 countries died in occupied Poland. This includes 1 million Jews moved to the Nazi extermination camps and 784,000 Soviet POWs.
See also
- Historiography of the Volyn tragedy
- Generalplan OstGeneralplan OstGeneralplan Ost was a secret Nazi German plan for the colonization of Eastern Europe. Implementing it would have necessitated genocide and ethnic cleansing to be undertaken in the Eastern European territories occupied by Germany during World War II...
- Pacification Operations in German-occupied PolandPacification operations in German-occupied PolandThe pacification operations in German-occupied Poland was the use of military force and punitive measures conducted during World War II by Nazi Germany with the goal of suppressing any Polish resistance....
- PolonophobiaPolonophobiaThe terms Polonophobia, anti-Polonism, antipolonism and anti-Polish sentiment refer to a spectrum of hostile attitudes toward Polish people and culture. These terms apply to racial prejudice against Poles and people of Polish descent, including ethnicity-based discrimination and state-sponsored...
- Nazi crimes against ethnic PolesNazi crimes against ethnic PolesIn addition to about 2.9 million Polish Jews , about 2.8 million non-Jewish Polish citizens perished during the course of the war...
- Treatment of the Polish citizens by the occupants
- World War II evacuation and expulsionWorld War II evacuation and expulsionForced deportation, mass evacuation and displacement of peoples took place in many of the countries involved in World War II. These were caused both by the direct hostilities between Axis and Allied powers, and the border changes enacted in the pre-war settlement...
- List of war crimes
- Nuremberg TrialsNuremberg TrialsThe Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
- Consequences of German NazismConsequences of German NazismNazism and the acts of the Nazi German state profoundly affected many countries, communities and peoples before, during and after World War II. While the attempt of Germany to exterminate several nations viewed as subhuman by Nazi ideology was eventually stopped by the Allies, Nazi aggression...
- List of Polish war cemeteries
- Communist crimeCommunist crimeCommunist crimes , is a legal definition used notably in Polish criminal law. The concept is also used more broadly internationally, and is employed by human rights NGOs as well as government agencies such as the Foundation for the Investigation of Communist Crimes, the Institute for Information on...
- Eastern Catholic victims of Soviet persecutionsEastern Catholic victims of Soviet persecutionsEastern Catholic victims of Soviet persecutions include bishops and others among the tens of thousands of victims of Soviet persecutions from 1918 to approximately 1980.-During the Second World War:...
- The Black Book of CommunismThe Black Book of CommunismThe Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression is a book authored by several European academics and edited by Stéphane Courtois, which describes a history of repressions, both political and civilian, by Communist states, including genocides, extrajudicial executions, deportations, and...
- Soviet occupationsSoviet occupationsSoviet occupations is a term used for military occupations by the Soviet Union from the prelude to the aftermath of World War II. The term is typically used for occupations of Eastern European countries...
- Hunger PlanHunger PlanThe Hunger Plan was an economic management scheme that was put in place to ensure that Germans were given priority over food supplies, at the expense of everyone else. This plan was featured as part of the planning phase of the Wehrmacht invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941...
External links
Poles: Victims of the Nazi Era Detainment of Poles related to WWIIFurther reading
- World War II crimes in Poland
- God's Playground Volume II by Norman Davies, Oxford University Press 1986 ISBN 0-19-821944-X Chapter 20 Poland in the Second World War
- Poland in the Second World War by Jozef Garlinski, Macmillian ISBN 0-333-39258-2 Chapter 3
- The War of the World by Niall Ferguson, Allen Lane, ISBN 0-713-99708-7 Chapters 12-13
- The Soviet occupation
- Blank Pages by G.C. Malcher, Pyrford 1993
- Civil War in Poland, 1942-1948 by Anita Prazmowska, Palgrave 2004
- Fate of Poles in the USSR 1939-1989 by Tomasz Piesakowski, Gryf Publications 1990
- Poland’s Holocaust by Tadeusz Piotrowski ISBN 0-7864-0371-3 Chapter 1 Soviet Terror
- Deportation
- The Polish Deportees of World War II Edited by Tadeusz Piotrowski, McFarland & Co ISBN 978-0-7864-3258-5
- Exiled to Siberia: A Polish Child's WWII Journey by Klaus Hergt, Crescent Lake 2000 ISBN 0-9700432-0-1
- Gulag a History by Anne Applebaum, Penguin Books 2004 ISBN 0-140-28310-2
- Janek A Story of Survival by Alick Dowing, Ringpress, 1989 ISBN 0-948955-45-6
- Red Snow by Telesfor Sobierajski, Leo Cooper, 1996 ISBN 0-85052-500-4
- War Through Children's Eyes Editor Jan Gross, Hoover,1981 ISBN 0-8179-7471-7
- Katyn massacre
- Attempt to Identify the Polish Jewish Officers who were prisoners in Katyn by Simon Schochet, Yeshiva University 1989
- Death in the Forest by J.K.Zawodny, Hippocrene 1988
- Katyn Massacre by Louis FitzGibbon, Corgi 1989
- Katyn: A crime without Punishment by Various, Yale University 2007
- Katyn: Stalin's Massacre and the Seeds of Polish Resurrection by Allen Paul Naval Institute Press, 1996. ISBN 1557506701
- The German occupation
- German Atrocities in Poland by J.K. Garvin, Free Europe Pamphlet
- Poland’s Holocaust by Tadeusz Piotrowski ISBN 0-7864-0371-3 Chapter 2 Nazi Terror
- Atrocities during the invasion of Poland (1939)
- Crimes committed by the Wehrmacht during the September campaign and the period of military government by Szymon Datner, 1962.
- Genocide 1939-1945 by S.Datner by J.Gumkowski and K.Leszczynski, Wydawnictwo Zachodnie 1962 Chapter 2 Crimes of the Wehrmacht
- The Bydgoszcz incident
- The German Fifth Column in Poland, Hutchinson, 1940 Chapter 3 – The Truth about the Bydgoszcz Incidents
- Terror and crimes against intelligentsia and clergy
- Poland in the Second World War by Jozef Garlinski, Macmillian ISBN0-333-39258-2 Chapter 6
- Cultural genocide and the preparations for the final solution
- The Origins of the Final Solution by C.Browning, Arrow Books, ISBN 0 09 945482 3
- Nazi Rule in Poland 1939-1945 by Tadeusz Cyprian and Jerzy Sawicki, Polonia Publishing House 1961 Chapter XIV Germanization of Children & XVII The Nazi Attitude to Science
- Forced labour
- Nazi Rule in Poland 1939-1945 by Tadeusz Cyprian and Jerzy Sawicki, Polonia Publishing House 1961 Chapter XX Forced Labour
- Auschwitz
- Auschwitz by Franciszek Piper
- Auschwitz A History by Sybille Steinbacher, Penguin Book
- The Bombing of Auschwitz by Various, University Press of Kansas
- Nazi Rule in Poland 1939-1945 by Tadeusz Cyprian and Jerzy Sawicki, Polonia Publishing House 1961 Chapter XXI-XXIV
- Primo Levi by Leonardo de Benedetti, Verso, 2006 ISBN 1-84467-092-9
- Concentration and extermination camps
- Belzec by Rudolf
- The treatment of Polish Jews
- Jews in Poland by Iwo Pogonowski, Hippocrene, 1993 ISBN 0-7818-0604-6
- Warsaw Ghetto
- A Cup of Tears by Abraham Lewin, Fontana 1990
- The Ghetto Fight by Marek Edelman, Bookmarks 1990
- Nazi Rule in Poland 1939-1945 by Tadeusz Cyprian and Jerzy Sawicki, Polonia Publishing House 1961 Chapter XXVIII The Report of Jurgen Stroop
- Warsaw Uprising
- The Warsaw Uprising by George Bruce, Pan Books ISBN 0 330 24096 X
- Rising ’44 by Norman Davies, Pan books ISBN 0 330 48863 5
- Seventy Days by Waclaw Zagorski, Frederick Muller 1957
- Nothing but Honour by J.K.Zawodny, Macmillan ISBN 0 333 12123 6
- Airlift to Warsaw by Neil Orpen, W.Foulsham ISBN 0-572-01287-X
- The Warsaw Rising of 1944 by Jan Ciechanowski, Cambridge ISBN 0 521 20203 5
- The Civilian Population and the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 by Joanna Hanson, Cambridge ISBN 0 521 23421 2
- Nazi Rule in Poland 1939-1945 by Tadeusz Cyprian and Jerzy Sawicki, Polonia Publishing House 1961 Chapter XXIX The Warsaw Rising